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Belgian Newspapers Delisted On Google
D H NG writes "After being ordered by the Belgian courts to 'remove from its Google.be and Google.com sites, and in particular, cached links visible on Google Web and the Google News service, all articles, photographs and graphics of daily newspapers published in French and German by Belgian publishers,' Google had removed all traces of the newspapers in question from all its search services. The newspapers, however, are crying foul, and alleged that it was done in retaliation for being sued for copyright violations."
What are you gonna do about it?
(Google does support a noarchive robots extension tag, so instead of suing Google, you could have had just the search results without content by simply adjusting your server output.)
Help me out:
#2 is the exact thing the court ordered in #1, right?
So why, O, why, are the publishers whining in #3:
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I think the correct response is "tough". Google have no obligation to include your site in their search results and if you start fucking around claiming copyright violation then the easiest way for Google to deal with it is to remove any trace of your sites entirely.
Welcome to the unintended consequences of your actions. Next time think about what you're doing a little harder.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I don't understand the logic behind the whining of these newspapers. First they sue Google for making their content discoverable. Then the court orders Google to remove the content. Google complies. Now the papers are whining about Google removing their content. What exactly is it that they want ?
Sounds to me like that court order pretty much required Google to do what they did. I assume the newspapers simply didn't realise exactly what it was they were really asking for when they made that attack, and I'm sure their competitors are loving them for it right now.
If linking to copyrighted material is copyright infringement, then so is linking to it on its search web site. Decide you stance on the subject.
If Google doesn't remove them from its searches, they demand money on the basis of ridiculous copyright claims.
If Google does remove them, they demand money on the basis of Google abusing its monopoly to punish them.
I know it doesn't make sense if you're sane, but that's how these sorts of people reason.
Google doesn't want to have to deal with another lawsuit over whether this link or that link is illegal. Nor are they going to spend extra money trying to be nice to somebody who used a blunderbuss lawsuit against them.
All of the links that they want removed are removed. Job done. The rest is just Google being very, very thorough.
It's kinda like a kid pissing on a wasps nest and complaining that the wasps didn't just quietly wait to drown. He'll be holding his breath a long time waiting for me to feel sorry for him -- or stop laughing, for that matter.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
So they thought that "pay us for using our content" meant "now you have to use our content and then pay us". Oops, maybe not!
It does sound like a particularly (French-)Belgian idea, though. Next we'll hear they are parking tractors on the Information Superhighway in protest...
The Belgian media can call foul all it likes however this is a rod of their own making. The courts don't act unless the copyright holder brings a complaint. As it has been established that Google may not republish their content it's clearly not safe for Google to link to it either.
If this means those media organisations now face a significant loss then perhaps they should re-evaluate the value to them of permitting something akin to fair use.
Google is a private company. It's not a public space. Those media organisations have no inherent right to be listed on Google at all.
Good for you Google, if they don't want to play with you then you shouldn't play with them.
The newspapers are complaining that the should only have been removed from google's "news" search, but not removed from the "web" search.
Clearly they don't understand how Google works: news is just a web search that only shows news articles. Clearly thees guys are posting news articles.
Google has no obligation to change how their system works just to keep a few small businesses happy.
1: The news papers don't want google display cache of webpages or using their images.
2: Google in order to comply as fast as possible with this insane idea and probably to upset said new papers; delists the entire domain for the websites. You time Euro News and you get nothing from these websites.
3: News papers are now upset that "Hey google not be sending us traffic. They pissy because we not let them use our stuff, so now we not get to use their stuff, unfair..."
By far the most common of the three languages in Belgium is Dutch.
The German-speaking community in Belgium is tiny by comparison.
I've been saying this for years... Why does google capitulate to idiots when it can simply... literally... ignore them
Whether this action amounts to punishment, or is a rational conclusion drawn from the demands of the newspapers will never be known. It could be both. However, the newspapers will soon learn a lesson: don't honk off the people who send all your visitors your way. Without Google websites have nothing.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Only *some french speaking* newspapers have been delisted.
Of course only french speaking newspapers associated to Copiepress, not all of them are concerned.
Funny belgian joke, as usual :)
This seems like the equivalent of taking someone to court to take your number out of the phone book when I they should have just asked for a silent number. You can't efficiently index something without taking a copy of it.
This confirms once again that Belgian are not very bright. There has to be a good joke in here some where. What does an American and a Belgian do to run a newspaper into the ground.
All these companies and sites that get all pissy with google over stupid stuff...
First thing google should do in any case of complaints or being sued is to strip ALL refrences to the offending site/company from their index.
"We feel the only contact we should have with $org$ is thru our lawyers."
As a google investor i like this idea.
would have been much cheaper than a law suit, with the same effect :-)
I couldn't agree more with Google. Whiny newspapers want to have their cake and eat it, too? How about no? I'd be damn careful not to mention anything even related to something that could cost me a million bucks. Let them eat crow! For the record, I'm Flemish.
One would think that a country already so thoroughly invisible on the international stage would do whatever possible to promote visibility. Nice work, Belgian media. You've actually managed to erase yourselves from search.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
You don't get to tell a search provider how they are supposed to use the content they index from you. I am ok with the idea that you should be able to tell them not to index you, if you don't want that done, but if you choose to be indexed you don't get to say "You can only do it in the way we specify, or using the terms we specify."
They demanded Google remove their shit, Google complied completely.
Also, when it comes to legal threats as were involved here, what choice does Google really have? The letter of the judgement says all material needs to go, so it is all gone. Maybe that wasn't the intent of what they wanted but obeying the letter of the law is important when you are hit with an injunction.
This is also a great example of something people need to understand in business or personal life: Never pick a fight with a company (or person) you can't do without. They have the right to decide they don't want to have anything to do with you anymore. That is not to say roll over and take anything from any one, but consider costs vs benefits. Like say you feel a store wrongs you in some relatively minor way, and they refuse to make good on it. Consider if it is worth it before you pick a fight, because even if you win they may say "Fine, don't ever come back, you are not welcome here."
I say good riddance, finally someone is standing up against them... La Libre is known to be giving misinformation all the time. Notice the title on the their article "Google fait "disparaître" les journaux belges". They still think, and want, Belgium to be French.
Good job Google!
I'm a french-speaking Belgian and the first thing you should know: french-belgian newspapers are utter garbage (I think dutch-belgian newspapers are utter garbage too). When I read newspapers, I read newspaper from France and from the U.S., where you can find some newspaper of much higher quality (a lot are junk, but there are at least a few good ones, which is not the case for french-belgian newspapers).
Then, honestly, they got what they deserved. These piece of garbage newspaper can go f*** themselves.
It's a good decision by Google and they simply complied with the court order.
As a side note it's going to make a lot of people think twice about suing search engines: if you piss off the judge with your silly lawsuit you may very well get what you asked for.
I think de-listing is a very good reading of that court order.
only decent thing to do. Be***um is, after all, the most obscene word in the universe.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
withdrawing articles or photographs is not the same as withdrawing all links to articles or photographs. I hope this is a badly-written court order rather than an over-reaction from Google; it's perfectly legitimate for newspapers to want to protect their content.
I don't want to lose the dead tree media; if journalism is reduced to an army of bloggers we're all doomed.
One could argue that Google went beyond the court order to a punitive extreme. But remember how Google works: it associates phrases and sentences with websites, and returns snippets of text along with the search results. I'd argue that their search engine *can't work* without storing at least fragmentary pieces of the newspapers' content, and they have no way of knowing whether a court will consider those fragments large enough to be a copyright violation. So nuking the sites from orbit is the only way to be sure.
On the other side of the coin, the attitude people are copping here, that Google has every right to remove sites from its searches whenever it wants, is flat-out wrong. Google is not a telecom provider, but the principles of data equality and "common carrier" status absolutely apply to a service as omnipresent as Google Search. And to be honest, since Google has been loudly demanding network neutrality from the telecoms, it's going to look like a total betrayal of its principles if it starts using search-engine blackmail as a business model.
Please advertise for us, but be careful not to put out one word too much.
What google understood:
Please ignore us
I'm happy that Google takes the high road more often than not.
In this case, Google has done exactly what the court ordered, well according to this English translation :
Order the defendant to withdraw the articles, photographs and graphic representations of Belgian publishers of the French - and German-speaking daily press, represented by the plaintiff, from all their sites (Google News and "cache" Google or any other name within 10 days of the notification of the intervening order, under penalty of a daily fine of 1,000,000 per day of delay
If the court had issued a more detailed order, like banning Google News only but granting Google web search a fair use exemption, then I'm sure Google would've followed that order instead.
If the court had merely banned Google from displaying the pictures and text snippets, but explicitly permitted them to use the titles, then Google would likely still show the results in Google News, but ranked very lowly. Search results should obviously not be cluttered up by stupid links without summaries.
I'd guess the paper's layer obtained this strong language thinking they'd negotiate some licensing deal with google. Yet first, google must obviously implement the literal court order as written. duh! Second, any licensing deal is unlikely to benefit the papers much because the papers depend more upon google than google depends upon them. Why should google buy their text snippets when other good Belgian papers give text snippets about the same subject matter for free?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Google is a private, foreign, totally unaccountable organisation.
Foreign? Yes. Private? Not entirely. It's publicly traded and therefore not totally unaccountable thanks to securities regulation.
but I can't find them in Google.
Joking aside, I'd like to comment two things.
1. As others already mentioned, Google didn't do this as a punishment for the newspapers (although they had to experience a certain pleasure while doing it, I would have), the court order was that broad, it basically ordered them to do what they did.
2. It is very scary that Google have this much power over the content of the web. Thankfully it is still an ethical company (when compared to any other company of its size and power, I know it is a company and it is still prone to do evil). In my own experience, almost all of my traffic comes from Google and if I were removed I probably wouldn't be hear of again, the proportion against the second search engine (bing) is 1 to, oh, exactly 174. And we gave it this much power because it is the best at searching, and there are still no rivals. These days I have DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, but I still need to do a few queries in Google almost every day.
I could be mistaken, but I think these newspapers were trying to force Google to pay them for listing them in Google News. They figured they would get this court order for an outrageous amount of money and then they could go to Google and offer to license the content for some more "reasonable" amount. Google's response was, "OK, if that's how you want it, we won't list you. Have a good life." The newspapers are upset because they got what they asked for, not what they wanted.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
the newspapers can blame themselves. Except for one smart newspaper, L'Echo, which only wanted te be removed from Google news.
They presented evidence to the court on how Google operates, using caching and such, to make their case stronger. They reasoned that the caching is infringing on their copyright. And they also presented information to the court that the caching is used for the search service.
So the court ruled that the sites be removed from all Google sites. (except for L'Echo)
They really got what they asked for and Google just complies.
Google said an order issued in the case required it to exclude the newspapers' websites.
This does appear to be the case. Remove content from "all your sites" is very broad, and with the penalties mentioned I'd remove them, too. Seems an entirely reasonable response to that court order, especially accompanied by the relist offer.
The paper La Capitale said on its web site Friday that Google had begun "boycotting" it.
Google spokesman William Echikson said the court decision applied to web search as well as Google News and the company faced fines of 25,000 euros ($35,359 per infringement if it allowed the newspapers' websites to keep appearing.
"We regret having to do so," he said. "We would be happy to re-include Copiepresse if they would indicate their desire to appear in Google Search and waive the potential penalties."
See that last line? Google has explicitly said, give us permission to list you in search again and we will, no questions asked. So all the people jumping up and down about Google abusing their monopolistic power... no. They aren't.
I really don't see how this is anything but a cash grab by the newspapers that misfired. After Google's offer to relist them as soon as they have permission, it's going to be quite awkward to A) deny Google that permission and then B) sue Google for delisting you. But I'm certain the newspapers will try. The delist and offer to relist seems to be a simple attempt to cut through legal shenanigans on Google's part. "We can list you or not list you. Say which one you want and we'll do it." And then afterwards, they can't cry about being unhappy with their status anymore with any real credibility.
The newspapers asked to be delisted from the "News" service, not the other.
I think Google has acted in retalation, and that is right ( I would have loved to be myself the one to press the big red "FUCK YOU" button), but lets be fair here. The newspapers are right in that this is not what where asking (delisting from News) but a delist from everything google.
-Woof woof woof!
Reminds me of what I was told to do by our CEO when the Bavarian police came to us (CompuServe) claiming kiddie porn existed in 200+ USENET news groups... our first response was that we just took away access to USENET to our subscribers in Germany. I then took 3 days over Christmas removing those groups listed by the Bavarian authorities in their entirety from our servers in Germany. The sad thing is, you could tell it was a bogus list, since I later found out (when I had the time to breathe) that you could reproduce the list of groups with 5 grep commands against the newsgroup listings, and that the list included things such as a breast cancer support group, and another similar group which was moderated no less...
In this particular instance... great job! Sarcastically for those who brought the suit and are now upset, and quite literally/enthusiastically towards Google.
Any papers could exclude exactly the content they want excluded from exactly the google sites they want it excluded because Google's news indexer has a separate user agent.
If they get an injunction however, then Google must obviously read the injunction as broadly as possible to avoid fines.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You get better beer than the rest of Europe though! :)
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I just tried google.nl and it appears that these newspapers' sites are indeed removed from all searches.
Nice. It'll take a higher court decision to get this turned around. So maybe they'll show up again in another 5 years...
This is not the sig you're looking for.
Google responded to a query from a dutch newsite regarding this issue.
Source: http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/107318/google-verbant-belgische-kranten--uitgevers-woest.html
Relevant quote, translated:
``We regret having taken this action, and are open for future cooperation with members of Copiepresse. Would we keep the material in our index, we risk fines up to 25,000 euro per incident. We would be pleased to include Copiepresse in our index if they declare they want to be included on Google Search and refrain from potentional charges``, Google declares to Webwereld.
Original response in dutch:
``"Het spijt ons dat we dit moeten doen, en we staan open voor samenwerking met leden van Copiepresse in de toekomst. Zouden we het materiaal in de index houden, dan riskeren we boetes tot 25.000 euro per inbreuk. We nemen Copiepresse graag weer op in de index als ze aangeven op Google Search te willen verschijnen en afzien van potentiële boetes", verklaart Google tegenover Webwereld.``
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Well done, Google!
Asking to be "delisted" from Google news but not from Google search seems quite stupid indeed as Google search would show links to these newspapers; Google's decision is simply logical and right, and this decision fully conforms the judgment.
Furthermore, no obligation is made to Google to reference a particular website or particular information.
I doubt Google is preventing the Begian newspapers from advertising on Google AdWords. The newspapers can pay with either content or Adword$, but they shouldn't expect free advertising.
LOL, in a govt search engine, all sites would be equal.
So of course, they'd all have to display on page 1.
But in a random order?
See this story from today about the government and randomness:
Green Card Lottery Judgment Favors Mathematical Randomness
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I can't find any references to it in Google.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This country is without government since more than a year. Given their unability to set up an agreement about how to rule themselves, their country should be delisted, and divided among their neighbours (hoping they will accept it).
Copiepresse's lawyers won a strongly worded injunction on behalf of these three papers. Google is making sure they don't violate it.
Ironically, the papers already had the ability to control how their content was displayed on google, through the nosnippets and nocache flags in metatags, google news' separate user agent id, etc. All they've achieved is : Now the papers must pay Copiepresse lawyers to make those changes slowly rather than paying their own technical people to make them quickly.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Just like the idiots shouting about how Apple is a monopoly and how everyone should sue them to make AppStore open.
Newsflash: market majority doesn't equal monopoly. There alternatives both for Google and for Apple.
Does anything actually happen in Belgium that's worth reporting ? According to received wisdom it's boring ! Having been there though I loved it - I prefer the term "laid back" ;)
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
Bing will easily attract the million of viewers that Google was providing.
Really? this is the thing with the written word, i just cannot tell whether that is supposed to be read with sarcastic emphasis
Is there any wonder why everybody hates lawyers. "Utterly precise, verbose" legal language is incomprehensible to the party subjected to it, such that they can be sanctioned for following it to the letter. This is the ultimate bullshit that leads to disrespect for law. Nobody can live their life without tripping over voluminous shit laws designed to trap an innocent party that happens to piss off the establishment. If the revolution ever does come, I wouldn't want to be a lawyer of a politician
And no. If I have to ask a judge for clarification for such a simple order, the judge is just making it up as he goes, adjusting it to his own wishes. And if it wasn't what he wanted in the first place, he should NOT have signed such a dumb assed order. He is being paid to know what the hell he is doing, not just wing it and see how it goes. .
A few years ago there was a comedy in the UK set in a newsroom where the storyline featured up to the minute news items. After a brainstorming session where they wanted something to reflect a minor news item they called it 'Drop The Dead Donkey' - the relevance to this thread is that the initial favourite title was 'Dead Belgians Don't Count'
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
I've been waiting for this to happen for a long, long time.
I hope their next move is to delist anything even slightly related to the MPAA or RIAA.
My mailing list has an opt-out feature. So I am going to add you - please use the opt-out if you don't want in.
Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it!.
No. It's more like this analogy. You mow your neighbors lawn for free. They take you to court and demand you leave their valuable IP (important plants) alone. You immediately comply. Then they complain, well, we still want you to weed the garden for free. It's not fair! You weed everybody else's garden on the street for free.
There is no exchange of money as you suggested. It is a free service provided.
and remove all past references to all editorial staffs working for those newspapers as well. This would actually be in full spirit of compliance with the court order too, as Google could be fined for each reference to articles written and copyrighted by the papers and the staffs working for them.
The newspapers, however, are crying foul, and alleged that it was done in retaliation for being sued for copyright violations.
Be careful what you wish for you. You might just get it
... is for the European Commission to sue Google for abuse of a dominant position. We already know Google like to ignore the law, so maybe some large fines and regulation will help to reform their behaviour.
I can't find it.